880 Italian soldiers make peacekeeper downpayment

First European contingent arrives to bolster U.N. forces in Lebanon

EDWARD CODY, Washington Post

Published 5:30 am, Sunday, September 3, 2006

TYRE, LEBANON — Led by commandos who splashed ashore in black dinghies, a contingent of Italian soldiers landed in southern Lebanon on Saturday in the first substantial strengthening of the U.N. force assigned to guarantee a fragile truce along the border between Israel and Lebanon.

The Italian troops, numbering 880 with 150 trucks and other vehicles, represented a down payment on the 6,900 soldiers that Italy, France and several other European nations have promised to send to create a reinforced version of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL, which repeatedly has been denounced by Israel as feckless in the 28 years since it was first deployed.

"This is a new UNIFIL," said Gen. Alain Pellegrini, the French commander of the force.

Reinforcing UNIFIL from its present strength of 2,000 to about 15,000 was a key part of the U.N. cease-fire resolution that stopped a 33-day war between Israel and the Hezbollah militia on Aug. 14. The resolution ordered the strengthened UNIFIL force, armed with tougher rules of engagement, to bolster the deployment of 15,000 Lebanese troops to establish government authority in the Lebanese border hills for the first time in a generation.

The Lebanese Defense Ministry said more than 8,000 Lebanese soldiers have deployed between the Litani River and the border with Israel. By the time the full contingent of 15,000 foreign peacekeepers reaches Lebanon toward the end of this month, a spokesman said, the army's strength will also have reached full strength. Controls along the border with Syria also have been tightened with the dispatch of about 8,500 Lebanese soldiers and Internal Security Forces, Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said.

Israeli officials have insisted the deployments must be in place before they will lift an air, land and sea blockade that remains in force nearly three weeks after the fighting stopped, despite repeated appeals from the Lebanese government and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. With the country's war-shattered economy strangled, enraged Lebanese officials have charged the blockade violates the cease-fire accord and is a continuation of Israeli aggression.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said foreign peacekeepers must be assigned to border crossings as well to prevent any resupply of Hezbollah forces through Syria. But Pellegrini, the French commander, said that is not part of UNIFIL's mission, raising the prospect of further delay in lifting the blockade.

In a reflection of widespread outrage at the Israeli blockade, the Lebanese Parliament began a round-the-clock sit-in Saturday.

The speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri, said the legislative body would be in session every day between 11 a.m. and 1 a.m. and that 10 members would sleep in the chambers every night until the blockade is lifted.

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"This is a national operation," he told a full chamber, emphasizing that all of Lebanon's many political parties were part of the protest.